HAVANA, Cuba (AP) --The last jail sentences in a crackdown on Cuba's opposition were
announced as Secretary of State Colin Powell condemned the campaign as "despicable
repression."

The series of trials -- none of them lasting more than a day -- has been
criticized by governments and human rights groups around the world. Cuba's
government has said the trials are necessary to save its socialist system from
increased hostility from Washington.

The 75 dissidents have received sentences of up to 28 years.

"There has never been anything similar to this in the history of Cuba," said
Elizardo Sanchez, whose Cuban Commission on Human Rights and National
Reconciliation has monitored the arrests and trials.

Powell called the trials "the most significant act of political repression in
decades" and said the United States would ask the Human Rights Commission
in Geneva to condemn Fidel Castro's government.

"We call on Castro to end this despicable repression and free these prisoners of
conscience," he said in a written statement Thursday. "The United States and
the international community will be unrelenting in our insistence that Cubans
who seek peaceful change be permitted to do so."

Cuba also has faced criticism for the speed of the prosecutions with opponents
saying they were carried out when the world's attention was focused on the
Iraq war. But Cuba has denied the charges, saying the arrests came before the
start of the fighting.

The four sentences announced Thursday included a 25-year term for dissident
physician Dr. Oscar Elias Biscet.

The defendants were accused of receiving money from the U.S. government
and working with Washington to undermine the socialist regime.

Tensions between Havana and Washington have increased since U.S. Interests
Section Chief James Cason, the top U.S. diplomat in Havana, began assuming
a higher profile in his support of the opposition.

Cason denies accusations that the U.S. Interests Section had dissidents on the
payroll, saying the mission operates no differently than American embassies in
other countries.

Cuban opposition leaders on Thursday urged a further international censure of
Fidel Castro's government.

"We call on all democratic governments and organizations of the world -- that
have not done so already -- so to openly reject this wave of repression," read a
letter signed by five leaders of the local opposition.

"We direct this call in particular to our brother countries in Latin America,
which up to now have not spoken out in this needed censure of the only
totalitarian regime" in the region.

Foreign Minister Felipe Perez Roque defended the quick trials and heavy
sentences. "There has been an obsession by the governments of the United
States to fabricate an opposition in Cuba, to create a fifth column," he said
Wednesday.

Perez Roque also read from a letter written by President Bush to Biscet,
congratulating the doctor -- who was sentenced Thursday -- for winning the
Democracy's People Award from the International Republican Institute in
February.

"I find this letter very strange," Perez Roque said, adding that Bush had never
written a letter to well-known government doctors and researchers who have
developed vaccines against illnesses such as meningitis.

The foreign minister said the dissidents were not charged with criticizing the
government, but for receiving American government funds and collaborating
with U.S. diplomats.

Perez Roque presented letters and detailed lists of payments he said proved the
defendants were getting money from the U.S. government.

For instance, Perez Roque said that in the home of independent journalist
Oscar Espinosa Chepe, investigators found evidence that over one year he
received $7,154 -- a huge sum in a country where an average government
salary is $25 a month. A wad of $13,000 in cash allegedly was found stashed
in the lining of a jacket.

Espinosa Chepe, who wrote about the Cuban economy for Web sites in
Miami, was sentenced to 20 years.

The U.S. Agency for International Development has given more than $20
million since 1997 to non-governmental groups in the United States to support
Cuban's opposition movement and promote democracy, human rights and free
enterprise on the communist island.

Dissidents who escaped the crackdown vowed to continue their efforts to bring
greater freedoms to Cuba.

"This is not the end of the peaceful opposition," said pro-democracy activist
Oswaldo Paya.

Copyright 2003 The Associated Press